Like a celestial version of Pixar's industrious robot Wall-E, environmental-monitoring satellites continually whiz overhead, quietly performing their allotted tasks of taking data and beaming the information down to climate researchers and weather forecasters.

That's because these U.S.-owned satellites are aging, and there are serious concerns about whether their replacements will be ready by the time they start to break down, said J. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society and a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens. (Read about the history of satellites.)

The replacement program, known as the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), has suffered under ballooning budgets, mismanagement, and political wrangling. That's partly what prompted the GAO to put weather data on its list of government operations at high risk.

The report stated that "potential gaps in environmental-satellite data beginning as early as 2014 and lasting as long as 53 months have led to concerns that future weather forecasts and warnings—including warnings of extreme events such as hurricanes, storm surges, and floods—will be less accurate and timely."

"But even a 17-month gap, [the shortest estimate for a potential data gap], dramatically affects weather forecast ability, which could lead to challenges to protecting life and property," Shepherd said.

Basic research would also suffer from the loss of data, said Scott Rayder, senior adviser to the president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. "Long-term weather data is climate data, so these [satellite] sensors are important in figuring out how the atmosphere works."

The current concern is focused on replacements for polar-orbiting satellites.

Traveling 517 miles (833 kilometers) above the Earth in a pole-to-pole direction every 90 minutes, NOAA's current crop of Polar Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) are nearing the twilight of their life cycles, Shepherd said.

The POES satellites were built with a two- to three-year operational lifetime in mind, said James Gleason, of NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland.

"And they've lasted a long time, some [for] more than a decade," he said. The most recent POES satellite, NOAA-19, was launched in 2009.

Dire Situation

NOAA has another polar-orbiting satellite, called Suomi NPP, that's also taking weather data. Launched in 2011, it was supposed to be a proof of concept in order to test instruments slated to fly on JPSS, said Shepherd.

But due to repeated delays in the JPSS program, NOAA is using Suomi NPP as an operational satellite. "It's working swimmingly," he said.

But JPSS isn't scheduled to launch until early 2017—and that depends on what happens to funding in the federal budget and whether the sequester kicks in, Gleason said.

NOAA is currently working on a plan to bridge any gap, should it occur, in data from their satellites. One possibility includes using a fleet of satellites owned by the U.S. military, called the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, to gather needed weather data.

It is time for Obama to wake up and realize our Nation in order for our people to be safe must have funding for these along with other satellites. He has continued to cut NOAA funds at a time when Severe Weather Events has been on the increase in parts of the Mid-West and in the entire Southeast Area of the U.S. which is leaving the American people in a Dangerous Situation. While the whole budget for NOAA is very small. It would be real easy to cut in some area other than NOAA that would not put the U.S. citizen in danger! Thanks! Len Holliday with firsthandweather.com